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Did you know that Ronnie Peterson agreed terms with Ferrari to fill Niki Lauda’s seat after the Austrian’s fiery crash in 1976?

Or that Lauda himself fully expected the whole field to pull into the pits behind him at Fuji?

Or that James Hunt’s deal to drive for Ferrari was scuppered by Vauxhall?

Or that one of Ferrari’s senior designers was kidnapped and, sadly, murdered in a story that could have been ripped from the pages of an Inspector Montalbano mystery?

Not for the first time, the S&G has written a book. It is the latest in the series of Haynes Manuals for enthusiasts of the most iconic cars in motor sport history – in this instance, the Ferrari 312T series. So if you like pretty red things and are looking for something to leaf through on holiday this summer, here’s the sales pitch:

This manual contains a guide to owning, restoring and enjoying one of these iconic 1970s Formula 1 cars.

If you happen to have a spare couple of million dollars that you don’t know what to do with, there is guidance on owning a 312T, T2, T3, T4 or T5. Even a T6, if you will… although not the fictional T8. There is also expert advice how to tackle an auction from the chaps at Bonhams and insights into ownership and maintainance from Hall & Hall.

If you want to get under the skin of this little beast, there’s now a book for you

This book won’t follow Haynes tradition and give you a step-by-step guide to replacing the wiring loom but then we are talking about a Formula 1 car and not a Morris Ital. If you can afford a 312T then you’ve doubtless got a man in a mews garage with grubby fingernails who can handle that sort of thing.

Alternatively, you might want to give it back to Ferrari, where Gilles Villeneuve’s former crew chief, Pietro Corradini, will tend to its needs in the Corse Clienti workshops. He is also a prominent contributor to the book.

But for those who want to revel in the history of the 312T there is, we hope, plenty to enjoy. Lots of pictures. Quite a few words. Many of those words came from the mouth of Mauro Forghieri, designer of the breed and of pretty well all things Ferrari from 1962-82. That interview, ladies and gentlemen, was a good day’s work.

Forghieri also had plenty to say about the storied summer of 1976 and the epic battle for the Formula 1 world championship between Niki Lauda and James Hunt. And if Forghieri had plenty to say then the team manager from that fateful season, Daniele Audetto, was a positive Vesuvius of information that had been bubbling away unseen by anyone for decades.

Certainly unseen by anyone in the English speaking world. The story of that summer of ’76 is often told but much of Audetto’s version of events was news to your humble scribe as it will be to any of you in the English speaking world because, let’s face it, the coverage at the time was rather patriotic in tone.

Unsurprisingly the Italian version of events is significantly different to the ‘official story’ as told by the Anglo-Saxon contingent and benefits from a whole host of scandals and intrigues never before mentioned in polite society.

This was all somewhat exciting to be told, but then it was rather an exciting project to be given. The 312T belongs to an age of unalloyed heroism exemplified by Lauda’s return from the Nürburgring, the likes of Hunt, Scheckter and Reutemann wrestling with their considerable fears about surviving each and every race weekend and Gilles Villeneuve’s devastating speed. Revisiting those days with such expert guides was a joy.

The making of the movie Rush and the cars that starred in it is also a feature. So too are those vital ingredients to the true story of 1976 that Rush missed out like the British Grand Prix riots – as reported by someone who was there lobbing beer cans onto the track.

The Ferrari 312T Owners’ Manual marks the second time that Haynes has offered the S&G an opportunity to write about the red cars. Almost 14 years ago your scribe was allowed into the inner sanctum at Maranello to document Ferrari’s resurgence under Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher. This resulted in the book Cavallino Rampante, which was one of the few times when life offers the chance to create something that will last a good deal longer than you will.

It’s been a pleasure to revisit that sort of territory again and one hopes that some of that enjoyment is passed on to the reader. So if all that tickles your fancy, please do dive in with both feet.

There are a few handy hints for those awkward plumbing and wiring jobs

Today, the good folk of the motor racing fraternity get a little green about the gills when the grey tendrils of politics are seen to encroach upon the virgin purity of their vocation. Mind you, trying to keep up with Damon Hill’s many back-flips over whether or not he believes a particular race should happen on political grounds would make anyone a touch queasy…

The fact remains, however, that in the days of Scarf & Goggles motor sport was quite simply an extension of foreign policy for most participating nations – be they hosts or participants. After all, once internal combustion had proven itself to be far superior to electricity, steam and any other form of motivation in the great races of the 1890s, there had to be a point to competition.

That point was granted by James Gordon Bennett Jr, the millionaire owner of the New York Herald. In 1899 Gordon Bennett inaugurated a trophy to be raced for annually by the automobile clubs of the various countries. Manufacturers would build cars that would be painted in the uniform colour of their nation: blue for France, white for Germany, red for Italy and green for Great Britain.

Racing for Britain: Napier shows off its green fleet of Gordon Bennett entries

The early 1900s were a time of fierce nationalism, sabre-rattling and military expansion which ultimately ended in World War 1. The whole of Europe was in a state of fervour, and motor racing provided a white hot crucible in which the technology of the arms race and the national status of the military powers could be trumpeted. Gordon Bennett was on to a winner from the outset.

The Gordon Bennett races were succeeded in 1906 by Grand Prix racing, but the nationalistic fervour which surrounded these races was no different – nor indeed were the racing colours. While the 1914 Grand Prix contest between the vast, organised might of Mercedes and the quixotic local hero Georges Boillot’s Peugeot was certainly spectacular in itself, it was undoubtedly given piquancy to the hundreds of thousands of French fans in the wake of the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and the mustering of arms that would soon be locked in battle.

Boillot (5) and the Peugeot team carry French hopes into battle in 1914

After World War 1 motor racing had a short break from political life but it bounced back with a vengeance with the rise to power of Benito Mussolini. Il Duce wanted more than just the trains to run on time, he wanted to rebuild the Roman empire and to do that would mean making the whole of the Mediterranean aware that their neighbours could take on and beat the world in matters of might and technology.

Mussolini’s patronage of, and benefits from, the great racing programme at Alfa Romeo were a match made in heaven, in his view. The scarlet cars from Portello would howl their way to victory in Grand Prix and sports car races across the whole of Europe, only to be greeted by a beatifically smiling Duce upon their return home.

Mussolini in the hotseat to greet Tazio Nuvolari (centre) and the Alfa team

While Italy triumphed, a certain Austrian politician was busy making all sorts of promises about funding racing cars if he was to get into power in Germany. Adolf Hitler was wooed by the motor manufacturers and wooed them back in return, forming a triumvirate with Deutsche Bank that effectively created the mechanical power of the regime and sold it to the masses via motor racing.

Millions of Reichmarks were poured in to the racing funds of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union by Hitler’s chancellery through the era of the ‘silver arrows’. The formidable German technology on show not only chewed up and spat out the competition across Europe, Africa and North America but also bred technology that was soon to be put to work in the latest weapons of war.

Ernst von Delius prepares for the 1937 Vanderbilt Cup in New York

But it wasn’t only Grand Prix racing. Motorcycle racing and sports cars were equally important to the NSKK (Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahrkorps, responsible for all automotive matters in the Reich) as the means to show German supremacy.

As for the races themselves, Germany and Italy turned their major race meetings into idealogical pageants, with flags a-flutter and uniformed stormtroops aplenty… the crowds at the Nürburgring were also treated to such pre-race entertainment as a display by the prototype Stuka dive-bomber.

BMW ace Huschke von Hanstein made his sponsorship clear

Both the German and Italian teams also had to be selective in their driver line-ups. For the German teams in particular, hiring non-German drivers was only ever done in line with national priorities. Occasionally the teams were then ‘requested’ by NSKK officials to deploy team orders, such as when Auto Union was required to allow Hans Stuck to surrender certain victory in the 1935 Tripoli Grand Prix to his Italian team-mate Achille Varzi.

You might be forgiven for thinking that, in the wake of World War 2, such political engineering would be consigned to history – but such was not the case. The cars retained their national racing colours, and when Tony Vandervell set out to create his world championship-winning Vanwall team in the mid-1950s, he did so with the sole objective of beating ‘those bloody red cars’.

Flying the flag: Hawthorn keeps a corner of Maranello forever England

Among the drivers, too, there was strong feeling. Stirling Moss always wished for a competitive British car, and when none was available made certain that his mount would at least carry British colours. Mike Hawthorn raced a green Ferrari in his first races of 1953 as a tribute from Enzo Ferrari himself, and later added a green windcheater to his racing uniform to ensure that, even when the cars were red, a flash of green was on show.

Of course Stirling also benefited from the pre-war ethos of team orders when at Mercedes-Benz, being handed his victory at Aintree in 1955 by his team-mate Fangio as a handy bit of PR for the Stuttgart marque.

Moss beats Fangio at Aintree – to Mercedes’ great relief

Today the modern version of Grand Prix racing takes the sport to nations which pay for the spectacle from public funds and seek to gain something back in terms of status, tourism, business and PR. The Caterham team, meanwhile, is owned by 1Malaysia, a government organization intended to promote racial harmony among its discordant Chinese, Indian and Malay population.

So it’s clear that, today, the sport is still carrying on at least some of the traditions that have kept it in rude health for more than a century. Politics are part of the fabric of life in all walks – although motor sport still has a long way to go to catch up with the Olympics!

At the highest level of the sport, Grand Prix racing remained largely a French affair from its inception in 1906, with only the American Grand Prize achieving anything like similar status internationally. In the aftermath of World War 1, however, Italy and Spain both inaugurated their own Grands Prix and in October 1923 the possibility of a future world championship for Grand Prix racing was discussed at the annual conference of the sport’s governing body, the Association Internationale des Automobiles Clubs Reconnus (AIACR), in Paris.

Alfa Corse won the inaugural world championship with its brilliant P2

In January 1925 a world championship format was duly agreed between the sanctioning bodies of the sport in France, Belgium, Great Britain, Austria, Italy and the USA. It would be contested by manufacturers for cars of 2.0-litre engine capacity weighing no less than 650kg. These cars must be two-seaters but riding mechanics were banned, while the championship they entered would be staged over four rounds of a minimum 500 miles each, these being the Indianapolis 500, the European Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, the Grand Prix itself at L’Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry near Paris and the Gran Premio d’Italia at Monza.

The Royal Automobile Club in Britain had initially signed up to organise a 500-mile race on the Isle of Man, but the rigours of the 50-mile circuit were felt to be too great by the AIACR. A secondary plan to race at Brooklands circuit was thwarted by noise regulations and Britain was thus absent from the inaugural world championship season when Alfa Romeo powered to an emphatic victory in the inaugural points standings.

For the 1926 season Alfa had withdrawn from Grand Prix racing but the British had got themselves organised and the English Grand Prix at Brooklands was duly added to the calendar with a race date of August 2nd. The large kidney-shaped oval at Brooklands was nevertheless felt to be unsuitable for the overseas cars, designed to race on twisting public roads, and so two chicanes were made at vast expense on the home straight, made from a huge amount of bright red sand, which effectively cut off the right-handed fork bend outside the Vickers aircraft shed and most of the steeply-raked Members’ Banking.

Further development of Brooklands in readiness to host a Grand Prix included installing more sand banks to protect the crowd from errant machinery, the construction of covered race pits on the Home Straight and both a scoreboard and footbridge, the latter being sponsored by J. Smith & Co. the London-based import agents for Delage cars.

Henry Segrave tries out the newly-installed chicanes during practice

Although there was considerable interest surrounding the 110-lap race, the Brooklands motto of ‘the right crowd and no crowding’ was enforced by setting the ticket price at five shillings per person and a further ten shillings to bring a car through the gate. Entry to the paddock meanwhile was subject to an astonishing levy of £1 per person – fees which, in the context of the day, even Bernie Ecclestone would blush at demanding!

A total of 15 entries arrived for the big event, led by the trio of works Talbots for Albert Divo, Jean Moriceau and British hero Henry Segrave. Three more entries came from the works Delage team for the bright new French talent Robert Benoist and the old stagers Louis Wagner and Robert Senechal. Bugatti did not send any works entries but their British importer – and land speed record breaking hero – Malcolm Campbell privately entered a Type 35.

Segrave (seated in car) enjoys a pre-race photo opp with ‘the right crowd’

Elsewhere six of the British entries did not arrive, leaving only the Major Frank Halford’s ‘special’ with a 6-cylinder engine of his own design mounted in an old Aston Martin, and Captain George Eyston in another Aston Martin, this time fitted with an Anzani side-valve motor. So it was that nine cars took starters’ orders from ‘Ebby’ Ebblewhite and as his celebrated red flag fell Divo’s Talbot got away cleanest to lead Cambell, Moriceau and Eyston into the first lap.

One unexpected effect of adding the chicanes to the circuit was however the toll taken on brakes and suspension as the cars, flat-out for most of the 2.6-mile lap as they screamed down Railway Straight and round the long, low loop of the Byfleet Banking, were slowed to almost walking pace. At the end of the first lap the front wheels of Moriceau’s Talbot collapsed under the strain but his team-mates Divo and Segrave powered on at the head of the field, with the Delages in pursuit.

And they’re off: the 1926 RAC Grand Prix d’Angleterre

It soon became clear that if the Talbots suffered from worrisome frailty, the Delages presented their drivers with a rather more pressing problem: burnt feet. Heat from the engine was turning the firewall and pedals incandescent, forcing the drivers to stop and bathe their feet in ice water and wrap wet rags around their shoes.

Eventually Wagner’s car picked up a misfire and retired, but after he had cooled his roasted soles suitably the grand old man was called up to replace Senechal at the wheel of his car, as he could no longer sustain the agony. The youthful Benoist had also reached breaking point and it was fortunate that Delage had brought another ‘ace’ – Andre Dubonnet – along to entertain its corporate guests. Resplendent in a pristine lounge suit, Dubonnet abandoned his post in the hospitality tent and hopped gamely into the car to complete the race.

While all this drama unfolded for the Delages, the Talbots were also coming unstuck as their superchargers gave out and both Segrave and Divo were forced to retire – although a barnstorming performance by the British star did at least secure the fastest lap in consolation. Both of the homespun efforts of Halford and Eyston also failed, leaving Campbell’s Bugatti as the lone challenger to the Delages and their long-suffering drivers.

After four hours the result was victory to the Delage of Senechal/Wagner with Campbell Second and the second Delage of Benoist/Dubonnet the only other finisher. It had been a remarkable event in so many ways, and one which unknowingly set the tone for world championship Grands Prix in a distant future that none of those in August 1926 could possibly have foreseen. Britain, meanwhile, was at long last on the Grand Prix racing map.

Here’s a video of the event, please feel free to turn the volume right down, though!

They were the most glamorous and celebrated couple in Nazi Germany… each of them winning honours in the technological marvels that were being produced throughout the pre-war days of the Reich.

In this photo we see them just weeks into their marriage. Elly Beinhorn, the celebrated aviatrix, embraces her victorious husband Bernd Rosemeyer after he has won the 1936 German Grand Prix.

She is already a record breaker and hero. He is about to claim the European Championship for Auto Union at only his second attempt against the might of Mercedes-Benz and the experience of Alfa Romeo and Maserati.

Together they are the human face of those years of astounding German achievement…